Erwan Gallo | Building, learning, swimming (in loop)

Everyone’s looking for a unicorn.

Here’s the story of a chimera.

A handmade golden paper chimera between the Breton coast and San Francisco Bay.

Once upon a time, in Brittany, between the countryside and the sea, a curious kid was born.

His name was Erwan. Pronounced Air One. R1 also works.

But this is probably not why you’re here. So let’s skip a few chapters.

A Breton landscape in folded paper, with cottages, a lighthouse, cliffs and waves.

I’ve always liked unfamiliar territory:
new places, new ideas, things I didn’t yet know how to do. That curiosity took me through law, finance and blockchain, and filled my shelves with over 1,500 books, comics and manga.

A paper library and law portico beside a bridge, a lighthouse and the sea.

Along the way, I worked with founders for the Solana Foundation through Superteam France, its official French delegation, and led ecosystem partnerships at Ledger. Then AI gave me another way to put those experiences to work: by building.

Eight faceless paper people exchange ideas, sketches and prototypes on a green circuit board.

Ideas in my head, in my notes, in the air, could finally become things I could test, break, understand and improve.

Almost like magic, like alchemy. So I started practising.

A young blond paper wizard in a blue hat and robe experiments with folded prototypes beneath golden ribbons.

First, a Telegram bot for myself.

I was meeting people at events and needed a better way to exchange details, keep the context and follow up.

That experiment became Cliccc: a tool helping sales teams turn real-world encounters into shared information and follow-ups.

I built the first versions, tested them in Paris, New York, Dubai and Singapore, and turned the bot into a web app.

A blue paper globe unfolds around three people exchanging details, with Paris, New York, Dubai, Singapore, messages and envelopes.

I headed north, into the Helsinki cold, for Slush, where I was selected for the Anthropic × Lovable hackathon.

I came back with a win.

That was the sign I’d been looking for.

I left Ledger.

To go all in.

A faceless blond paper traveller with a golden award on a snowy Helsinki pier, between a ferry and the cathedral.

2026 started in a rush: I joined Founders Inc.’s Artifact program and ended up spending three months in San Francisco.

Fort Mason became Fort Maison.

I didn’t come home with everything I’d hoped for, but I came back with plenty of lessons and new skills.

A cut-paper waterfront workshop where founders build together beside San Francisco Bay.

Back in France, I wanted to keep that pace, that energy, that constructive competition.

Hackathons became my laboratory: unfamiliar tools, new directions, tight deadlines, and one clear goal: win.

Over the following months, three more first-place finishes followed, along with a second place and two finalist spots.

A blond paper maker and three robots in a Paris paddock, with starting blocks on the left roof and three trophies on the right.

Then came a chance to revisit Cliccc, with a twist.

At the OpenAI Codex × Mollie hackathon, I challenged myself to rebuild the idea from scratch in one day with Codex.

PoCodex turned IRL sales and networking into Pokémon-inspired battles.

Won 2nd place.

In order to work more efficiently: keeping project context, decisions, reusable workflows and skills organised across sessions, with checks for what agents can do and what they produce. I’m building ErwanOS. Less friction and human repetition, more time building.

A paper workshop where Erwan and three robot goblins share notes between organised archives and a desk.

There’s a time for battles, and a time to pass on what you’ve learned.

A chance encounter took me to ORBIT’s Chief of Staff Hackathon in Stockholm as a mentor and juror. More than fifty operators, business challenges under pressure, and six lessons from my experience building with AI.

With a few cooking references. I’m French, after all.

Five paper people build a small application around an orbiting cooking pot, beside the Stockholm waterfront.

Making unfamiliar things understandable was already part of my ethos.

Through Harry Potter in Muggle to Wizard. By exploring Gucci’s Web3 strategy* or taking apart Starbucks’ loyalty program.

Through technical explainers with Only the Zest.

*Bonus: After the Gucci report was published, Gucci and Kering reached out.

A blond paper presenter reveals a tangled ribbon and a lightbulb on a violet-curtained stage, with a wizard hat, coffee, a coat and a lemon.

People were asking me how to make AI useful in their own work.

That’s why I started Briques.ai: to help teams and individuals do more with their own expertise through AI, drawing on what I’d learned across different fields.

Paper workspaces illustrating useful AI for teams and people working on their own.

Today, that includes a family-owned sawmill. A different atmosphere from a San Francisco coworking space, where precision and knowledge of the craft matter.

I’m building around their workflows and the software they already use. Adapting the technology, checking the results, and helping them understand how it works.

Adoption starts with understanding. And with meeting people where they already work, not asking them to work around the technology.